The Devil's Fingers
by Monella
Summary: Fill for this prompt: So Hannibal begins touching Will at crime scenes. He starts with simple things, and then at some point Hannibal wraps an arm around him and he doesn't even find it weird. (Warning for conditioning and other dark mind games.)


**Full Summary: **William Graham was hardly the sort one would approach often- he was rare, vulnerable in all his layers of issues. He was the sort who had so much potential for being as much a beast as those he walked with, the sort who could mimic all the right steps in a tango he had never danced before, his imagination having to fill in the dangerously steep gaps. It would take a single wrong step (a single easy push) for him to fall to oblivion.

So what better way to measure his success of getting into Will's mind than through one of his biggest weaknesses: touch?

**Warnings: **Abuse of Power, Conditioning, Manipulation, Mind Games and some violent imagery.

* * *

_Conditioning: __Verb_

_1. Have a significant influence on or determine (the manner or outcome of something)._

_2. Train or accustom (someone or something) to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances._

…

It was something every single textbook seemed to mention in one way or another, all of them building together the strong and continuous danger of letting someone into your head. Hannibal of course could probably quote it all word for word with the same ease he could get the wheels rolling on his plan. After all, a man so close to being humanity's equivalent of a modern Lucifer always had some sort of plan- especially if he wanted something. Especially if he wanted someone to add to his collection of pretty little red memories.

William Graham was hardly the sort one would approach often- he was rare, vulnerable in all his layers of issues. He was the sort who had so much potential for being as much a beast as those he walked with, the sort who could mimic all the right steps in a tango he had never danced before, his imagination having to fill in the dangerously steep gaps. It would take a single wrong step (a single easy push) for him to fall to oblivion.

To fall into pure agony.

Unlike his usual dance it didn't take long of observing the man for Hannibal to realise there were far better games to play than hunting a little mongoose down. Instead he'd rather avoid settling for immediate gratification, focusing on what he could get in the long run if he remained careful. If he didn't take too many risks he was more than capable to sneak his way to exactly where was the best place to strike.

And strike he would.

The mongoose may have snuck after the snake in the dark but the darkness was the perfect place for even bigger monsters to hide out in.

Will wasn't one to trust, he wasn't one who could put his forts down long enough for any normal person to really get to know him. He saw so much sometimes Hannibal could see the twitching of those slender fingers with the utter desperation to claw his beautifully hollowing eyes (his beautifully racing mind) until there was nothing but darkening red. Until there was nothing but darkness and he didn't have to see a single other cruel mind. Until he was left in a dark delusion of safety, where he could huddle within himself as though no more than a lost child pleading for just one night sleep where terror wouldn't consume him from within.

Hannibal had to admit, if the time came, he'd gladly offer Will a hand to aid him in the destruction of his link to 'evil' and the link to the little sanity left around him. If the time came perhaps he'd be the one to hold the other still as the monsters came for him at last.

Things would never run so quickly though, he knew that well enough. Instead he had to settle on watching a slithering his way around Will's still trusting pale neck.

But to ensure he was winning Will over, that he was truly getting somewhere with him, he had to discover something to measure it by. Some form of a test so that he knew it was only Will's subconscious that was taunting him with who Hannibal really was. Something that when the time came would be his way to take what was already somewhat his.

Touch, after all, may have been the simplest option.

It took no magician to see how Will's autism prevented him from ever feeling comfortable with casual contact even with those he let the nearest to him. Only a fair player would view that as something he should toy with- especially someone who had so much power over someone who was beginning to rely on him. Unethical was only one of the many words that would drag a long and hard laugh from Hannibal's lips, as though the suggestion that he was something so basic was partly insulting. He always got what he wanted and a good hunt made the rewards so much more worth it.

Effort was like an extra ingredient, flavouring the food with an extra layer and ensuring that it was memorable to the last sauce ridden morsel.

As though re-enacting one of the pages in his books it would start off simple, standing closer than perhaps Will would normally like. Barely in his unusually large personal space yet enough for it to cause the first glimmers of discomfort. Of course Will would refrain from commenting then because it could only be an accident, no matter how brilliant Doctor Lecter seemed to him there was no way he'd know exactly how close was almost too close to cope with. There was no way one man could wonder into his mind like he so often wondered into the minds of others.

With the first traces of discomfort though he'd end up ignoring it, he'd end up telling himself it was all in his mind (that the stress was getting to him) until he genuinely believed it.

Whilst paranoid Will would never let that fully show on his ruffled surface, preferring to keep up some pretence that he was anywhere near normal. He was used to people that judged him for his differences, that labelled him as a 'freak' for them. That wished to run from them or try to take them away from him as though they hadn't been engraved so deeply within his mind that they were always going to be part of him.

It would seem impossible to someone so very pushed back, suffocated, by the views of others that anyone could see his deficiencies as though they made him worth more than some sort of criminal sniffer dog. It would seem impossible to him that someone would ever want him mostly because of his mind- that someone would gladly twist him until he was on the verge of breaking simply to get a better view at how far he could bend before something snapped so perfectly beyond repair that he'd be easily moulded into something much more beautiful, something so much more rare.

So as Will slowly got used to Hannibal's proximity it was easy to watch how the hairs on his arms were slowly lowering, how the Goosebumps on his skin were slowly leaving. For Hannibal it was easy to take in the smells surrounding Will as he let himself be pulled under the waves of the latest beautifully shredded body left almost as though by a cat leaving a treat for its human.

So beautifully composed that it might as well have a bow on it.

Hannibal had always liked dramatics when it came to certain things that seemed worth it. And when Will was captured by the case it was difficult for him to realise how out of place the hand on his back may have been. It would be impossible for him to realise how possessive Hannibal's pose was becoming as he stood waiting near him, one of the very few allowed to stay and watch as a masterpiece of empathy and hideous understanding was being engraved with a blunt knife into an already scarred (mutilated) mind.

How could Will be uncomfortable when he was letting himself relive a murder that would haunt his already so full nightmares for weeks to come?

Every single human needed something to ground them, something to hold them together and sometimes something to comfort them. If Hannibal's touches were slowly beginning to become what dragged and kept Will in the world of his own life more than anything else he truly couldn't pretend it was an accident. Every situation was there for a reason and he'd be more than disappointed with himself if he didn't grip the ones he could with both hands before beginning to squeeze the life out of his beautiful project.

(Will was slowly stopping being a game and becoming a project. He was becoming so trapped without ever needing a single restraint apart from how painfully human he still was.)

Hannibal was many, many things but it had been a very long time since he'd been able to consider himself human in a more in-depth manner. Biology meant nothing and his mind was one psychologists saw in their very worst nightmares.

Most of the contact he started with could easily be seen as purely accidental- a hand lightly brushing over Will's, shoulders bumping or even the occasional hand touching his arm to capture his attention. Every little bit planned to the point it flowed as though it had never been intended.

Usually all it took was a different topic to mention and all worries there were about it being intentional faded to the back of Will's mind. If the timing wasn't quite right there were still few issues in finding a pre-prepared reply that could be spoken so smoothly a snake's venom would briefly turn into honey.

Contact though when with someone like Will had to be approached gently, as though he was subconsciously trying to aid the other rather than if he was intentionally manipulating the most basic setup in Will's mind. It was almost tragic that by doing it he was also becoming one of the very few people Graham actually believed cared about him.

Who knew though, perhaps in some twisted way Hannibal did care for him.

It was hard to tell when half of him wanted to take a blade to Will's neck and the other half wanted to possess to younger man every way he could.

…

It turned out, in the end, months of working at it paid off when the case really did get too much for even Will to stomach.

(Hannibal had to briefly consider sending the killer a thank you note for making everything so much easier.)

Blood was splattered like a second layer of paint over what once would have been cream walls, even the ceiling still seeming to drip down in a rainstorm of red, red, red. There were marks of where bloody hands had been dragged on the floor, more red than many would have believed possible making it difficult to walk without contaminating the plentiful sea of evidence.

Sea of evidence, Hannibal had to admit, fitted perfectly to how just the sight of it made Will look like he was drowning. Too many things surrounded him at once and sharp blue eyes seemed to move over everything in search of something just out of his reach, as though the killer was still there but he couldn't quite reach what he was looking for.

Whilst usually pale he'd lost the little colour that usually decorated his cheeks as he swallowed, tongue trying to dampen his lips and nails digging into his palms to give him something to keep him grounded. Not all that long earlier he'd had other manners of dealing, other manners to focus on who he was in an attempt to not get too suffocated by who the killer was. Keeping his mind separate when the case was bad was vital because if not the aftermath always left him a little more lifeless, a little less Will.

The techniques he'd once used though were now faltering in his ever increasingly strained mind, not strong enough when he had to go deeper than surface level. Even the simplest touch had once been enough to snap him out of his reverie with the force of a punch but with slowly getting used to Hannibal's gentle fingers brushing on his arm once in a while there was no simple exit. No trigger word, and there was no horror he could shut his eyes to. Fear of seeing was now the fear of his eyelashes being stuck open, fear that no matter how hard he would try there wasn't going to be a way to forget the gentle swerve of blood decorating what would have been beautiful, still growing features.

Cold and calculated rage mixed with pure terror in an overwhelming mass of colours and events, Will's eyes draining of their powerful colour as he let go of first layer so he could go as deep as required, so he wouldn't let down the dead girls now his responsibilities, he couldn't let down dear 'uncle Jack' who trusted him to find the criminal and he couldn't let down Hannibal who had recently become one of the only ones he wasn't completely paranoid over.

(And yet he was becoming more paranoid of others. It would someday seem so very painfully obvious in hindsight.)

Will slipped deeper into the pretence that there would ever be an easy way away from all he made himself see and Hannibal watched how easy it was going to be to keep his position of power when Will was so willing to trust him. So willing to trust anyone.

He was, after all, painfully human and there would never be any denying of that fact. It was his empathy that made him special, his autism that stopped people from being able to connect with him and it was the loneliness caused by this that left him so vulnerable to Hannibal's games. He was human, after all, and all humans got lonely. Everyone hungered for something even if they didn't understand what. Everyone needed something even if in their eyes it may be seen as a poison.

Will was human and he had been starved of touch for so long it could have been seen as some form of a horrifying venomous beast rather than a weakness. He would likely see himself as someone who would did need or want it- how could anyone live so long without something they needed? The idea seemed completely ridiculous to anyone who didn't take the time to test the theory out.

Hannibal had gone a very long time without needing anything more than a hunt and the satisfaction of possessing someone in their last moments. Possessing the end to any life they could have had. But the moment he'd taken the time to take in Will in all of his genuine empathic innocence it was clear that there was something else he needed (wanted) beyond belief.

Letting William Graham let himself slip away under the waves of madness, in the end, was the only logical choice. In letting him drown until on the very verge of losing himself it would be Hannibal who knew exactly the right time to reach out, to ply him from the water at the very last moment and letting himself seem some form of a 'good' person. Someone worth trust.

(Someone worth letting in to every corner of his troubled mind.)

"Doctor Lecter can stay."

Swallowing back a proud smirk at Will's soft words he watched everyone but Jack leave within moments, only the odd confused frown lingering on their features.

They had all noticed at one time or another how close Hannibal tended to linger near Will, how Will never moved away from him as he did others as if he didn't notice the other was there. As though Hannibal was the one person on all of Earth who had found a weakness in his defences and had managed to fit himself through it, slowly and lingering as he learnt every detail nobody else had been given a chance to do.

The snippets others had been given of what went on behind the scenes didn't count because they were just short, sharp bursts of information. Nothing really in depth left to be seen simply because of Will's constant guarded nature.

People couldn't let him down if he never expected anything from them.

People couldn't disappoint when there had never been any hopes they would do anything else.

Finally though it was just the three of them, others confused but still not grasping how very close to fire they were leaving Will. The man with crystal water filling his eyes could only last so long when the man pretty much formed by fire was the only one who could reach him. Water could put out fire when there was enough of it but Will wasn't whole enough to be considered enough to falter Hannibal. He was barely enough to cause a pause, a slight need to change his direction… a slight need to take a different approach.

Hannibal knew his own ideas of beauty full well- he always had. He knew what he considered beautiful and yet he couldn't help but wonder if he had ever seen anything quite as beautiful as Will when he was slowly drowning in another man's mind, eyes too hollow to contain much and his lips parting for him to talk with the voice of a long since dead man.

Dead and alive, mixed together so perfectly it was difficult to tell, the urge to reach other and check his pulse evident in Jack's eyes. If anyone had been looking at Hannibal's though they would have found him torn between wanting to reach other and finishing the job (twisting Will's head so roughly that the bones would snap like crisps in a packet) and the urge to reach other and see how much damage he could make before Will was beyond fixing.

Sometimes he still believed that Will had the smallest chance of being fixed and then the eyes would move to him, begging for help with the same strength of a whisper in a dark night, scared than there was no fixing him. It wasn't as if Will had ever been considered normal so how would anyone know what to fix him back into?

It was almost funny how someone so broken was still so very beautiful, the words leaving him slowly and still rushed, everything seeming like a contradiction. As if in that moment there were two Wills, both trying to make it to the surface and neither managing because they were still being pulled deeper, much deeper than they could possibly keep holding their breath in.

Deeper than any being could go and still hope to be able to return to the surface before their very limbs were too tired to do anything but help pulling them down.

The longer they left him, the harder it would be for anyone but Hannibal to try and recompose him.

Instinctively he knew when Will was slipping too far and too fast, stepping forwards and resting a hand on the man's back, listening to the increasingly fast panicked breaths that were spilling over from his lips.

"I think that's enough." He said more to Jack than Will, gently placing his arm around Will's back, as though soothing him with the gentleness of the movement. He gave no chance for Jack to reply though, a sharp look silencing the man more than he probably should have allowed- he still did require the other to trust that he was good. But he also had to make it seem as though Will's wellbeing was one of his priorities. "It'll do him no good if his mind gets stuck." Hannibal added as an easy explanation and Jack nodded, eyes stuck on where Hannibal was making contact as though it was one of the strangest sights he had ever encountered.

It probably seemed all the stranger when the colour was blinked back into Will's eyes, the man seeming to lean into the touch rather than away from it, taking comfort in the grounding Hannibal's strong arm offered. It was real, the touch was real, what he had seen wasn't real in that moment it was just an approximation of what had happened. It wasn't who he was, he wasn't the one holding the knife, he wasn't the terrified girl trying to get away, crawling through her sister's blood.

He wasn't the one who had smirked as he caught her and dragged her back as though she was no more than a doll that needed to be taken apart.

Will shut his eyes as he tried to even his breathing out, mind not having caught up enough to realise how odd it was for Hannibal to have offered such an evident bit of contact. But chances were even then it wouldn't have seemed odd to him, almost leaning against Hannibal as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

"I think he's been pushed far enough for one day. I'm going to drive him home." Hannibal said simply, finding it easy to hide how pleased he was in Graham's response.

He had been building it up for months and part of him had worried it would take multiple attempts for the first bit of major contact to be accepted but to his pleasure it seemed he had been wrong. Will's body, unlike his mind, was slowly to not need any contact but Hannibal's- still not trusting the others enough to let them so close to him but believing Hannibal one who wouldn't use the unconscious trust against him.

Well, they were all entitled to be wrong once in a while were they not?

Moving his attention to Will Hannibal slowly shifted, leading him to the door as though wanting to get him out and away from the horror clearly still making him feel insane rather than it being him simply getting him away from all the prying eyes they were certain to pass by.

(Not that Hannibal minded in the slightest people knowing he was the one who'd finally stolen Will's trust but there was a right time for everything.)

In the acceptance of the touch Will had proven at last that the other was indeed truly inside of his head, too much so for anyone to know the extent yet. He, for the first time in years, didn't so much as frown at the uninvited contact. All Will did was sink closer, trying to frighten the monsters that haunted him away by accepting someone else's help to keep himself going. If Hannibal had been anyone else it would have been a fair choice and for the time being Hannibal had to still be anyone else.

It was too soon for the truth to be revealed when he was having so much fun with their games.

Sliding by those who passed them there was a hint of possessiveness to how he angled Will away from them, yet such a hint could be misinterpreted to be protectiveness. It could be misinterpreted and it clearly was, the only shock on people's faces being that Will had accepted someone else's presence. Nobody saw it as that odd that Hannibal would be ready to offer.

(They'd been building up to this for months after all. It wasn't just Will he'd ensured to condition into seeing Hannibal's proximity as normal.)

The air outside though was cold, cold enough that Will's shivers could be blamed onto it rather than anything else. Cold enough that the contrast in their skin temperatures made Hannibal's warm skin seem comforting rather than scalding and that Will's still frozen shape was suddenly seeming to melt much too quickly much too fast. So many details nobody else would notice slipping by Will almost uncharacteristically and being collected by Hannibal for later inspection.

"I'll drive you to mine, it's far closer. Once you seem better we can discuss you going back to yours." Hannibal said plainly as he guided Will to his car, fingers coming to rest flatly on Will's side as though he was the only thing keeping Will standing.

"I'm fine." The protest was weak, hard to believe as Will's lowered head allowed his curls to slip onto his face as though trying to shield the exhaustion written on his face. "I've faced a lot worse, I just had a slip up, that's all."

"So surely it is best to not push yourself too far? Jack has been pushing you too far too quickly on these cases. Your mind hasn't had time to heal between them." Giving Hannibal the perfect opportunity to play with it before Will was back to his full senses. And whoever would check his home first?

Will faltered again, still not trying to step away from Hannibal's guiding movements. "I'm not some fragile china."

"Indeed not. You are human- and every human has their weaknesses." He paused to look over the other's tired face. He was vulnerable, much more than he himself had seen coming and with the changes going on he was struggling to keep up. "Do you not trust me, William?"

There was a moment of pure silence.

"Yes, I trust you."

And that was Will's mistake to make, sitting in the car when he was told to and ignoring the most basic part of him that wanted nothing more than to run a mile.

(It was, after all, just as Hannibal had said it would be. Will was human and so starved of what he needed some day he would be almost torn in two by the sheer broken need for someone to be there for him. And Hannibal was going to ensure he was the one there when he did shatter to his most basic, beautiful form.)


End file.
